Author: mhasegawa

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Barack and Jacoby

The Social Security Administration has released their list of baby names for last year.  Not surprisingly, Barack  is becoming a popular name.

Jumping more than 10,000 spots — from number 12,535 in 2007 to 2,409 in 2008 — it’s by no means one of the top titles for tykes. But 2009 could see an even bigger spike, perhaps putting the name in the top 1,000 for next year.

Barack Obama

Kinda like when a bunch of baby boomers were named Dwight, after the President and General Eisenhower.  But it does change the perception of the name, Barack, when there are a lot more of them running around and lots of people know a child with the name.  I used to be unique with the name Maya until Maya Angelou gained a lot of recognition.  I had a very brief encounter with her in 1977 when we both remarked how interesting it was to meet another Maya.  Now Maya’s are all over the place.

And then there is the growing popularity of Jacoby.

Though Jacob was the top name for boys, its variation, Jacoby, jumped 200 spots to number 423, drawing inspiration, no doubt, from Red Sox rookie centerfielder Jacoby Ellsbury. Perhaps these kids will be stealing bases like number 46 when they start T-ball.
Jacoby Ellsbury

I should also note that for some reason Emma was the top girl’s name with Olivia holding steadyand Miley moving up.

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Manny being Stupid

Manny Ramirez has been suspended from baseball for 50 games – until early July – for testing positive for “performance enhancing drugs.”  The New York Times’  George Vescey  in his column, “Manny Joins the Lost Generation”, put together his list of users

With his suspension on Thursday, Ramirez joins Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, Jose Canseco and ultimately Alex Rodriguez and Miguel Tejada on the mental list of players who were dirty, or probably dirty.

Clemens, Bonds, McGwire, Palmerio were all older players who probably started juicing as they felt their careers slipping away.  Manny has joined that list.  He’s an older player who was worried about his contract with the Red Sox or getting picked up by another team.  I think he probably started that last year with the Sox when there were those strange incidents like the pusing of  the elderly staff memeber.

The Boston Globe published this interesting chart.

I think it speaks for itself.  Yes, the Dodgers was only part of a season, but the change from his very consistent numbers is pretty amazing.

Back to Vescey

Ramirez was already on probation with most fans, given the way he goldbricked his way out Fenway last season, holding the bat on his shoulder when he didn’t feel like swinging against Mariano Rivera. Interesting, how Ramirez is represented by Scott Boras, the same agent who advised Pay-Rod’s contractual feints and dodges.

Manny went out to Los Angeles and had himself a few wonderful weeks last autumn. The Dodgers have built their offense around him and are selling a pair of left-field seats for $99 and calling the section Mannywood. Lately there were suggestions in the Los Angeles press that the Dodgers lock up Manny for the long run. At the same time, his samples were simmering in a test tube, with bells and whistles going off, conferences behind closed doors.

Maybe he comes back. Maybe the Dodgers hang on through the suspension. Maybe he can still play without whatever he was taking. But down the line comes a jury of sportswriters, who wish they had been a little more astute back in 1998, and now have the chance to vote Manny on or off the island known as the Hall of Fame. Good luck with that. Rooms facing the lake in Cooperstown, coming up soon.

I feel for David Ortiz, Manny’s best friend on the Sox, who now has to live with all the questions.  Here are Jonathan Papelbon and Mike Lowell on Manny’s excuse – the doctor gave me something.

The Sox roundly rejected the notion that Ramírez took a drug that would result in a positive test without knowing, an excuse Ramírez used in the statement he released. Papelbon was asked about the difficulty of comprehending the banned list of substances.

“It’s really easy, actually,” Papelbon said. “They make a pamphlet for you in English and Spanish. You just read it and you know what you can’t take. It’s really not that hard.”

Said Lowell: “I don’t understand why now anyone would even come close to taking anything that could remotely result in a positive test. In the past, if guys did it, they had the crutch that they weren’t testing. Maybe there’s some stupid society that maybe I wasn’t invited to. I don’t get it. I don’t. I wish I could, but I don’t.”

Yesterday the news hit around lunchtime and quickly spread through my office full of Sox fans .  There was a lot of surprise that Manny had been so stupid and a lot of speculation as to what he had done while with the Sox.  There was a lot of  sadness, too, remembering all the great years and great games that Manny had in Boston.  But this is not Manny being Manny.  This is not funny, it is just stupid – and probably career ending.

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Updates on Recent Posts

Today’s Wasserman cartoon in the Boston Globe is a perfect follow up to my recent post on Banks and Our Money.

05.06FINANCE%20CHARGES%20copy

And then you have even more trending toward Marriage Equality.  This happened today.

The Maine House of Representatives approved a bill to legalize same-sex marriage Tuesday, bringing the state one step closer toward legalizing the practice.After an emotional three-hour debate, the Democratically-controlled House voted 89 to 57 in favor of the bill.

“The country is watching us, to see how a small proud, independent state will stand on issue of equality,” said Rep. Sean Flaherty of Scarborough, who supported the bill.

The State Senate, which is also controlled by Democrats, approved the bill last week in a 21 to 14 vote. The vote was mostly along party lines, though one Democrat opposed the bill and one Republican voted in favor. The body must now give final approval to the bill.

Everyone is now waiting to see what the Democratic governor, John Baldacci, will do.  It seems to be a race between Maine and New Hampsire.  And also today, Washington D.C. City Council voted to recognize gay marriages.  We continue to make progress.

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Trending toward Marriage Equality?

The Boston Globe ran this AP story this morning which I read in my print copy. (Long may the Globe prosper so I can read it at breakfast.)  According to the AP

In recent weeks, Vermont and Iowa legalized same-sex marriage, while New York, Maine, and New Hampshire have taken steps in that direction. Polls indicated that younger Americans are far are more tolerant on the issue than are older generations. For now at least, the public is much more focused on the troubled economy and two wars than on social issues.

In addition, over the past decade, public acceptance of gay marriage has changed dramatically.

A Quinnipiac University poll released last week indicated that a majority of respondents, by a 55-to-38 percent margin, oppose gay marriage. But it also found that people, by a 57-to-38 percent margin, support civil unions that would provide marriage-like rights for same-sex couples, indicating a shift toward more acceptance.

I think it is relatively easy step from “marriage-like rights” to actual marriage so this looks hopeful.  The article goes on

With congressional elections next year, Republicans, Democrats, and nonpartisan analysts say the changes benefit Democrats, whose bedrock liberals favor gay unions, and disadvantage Republicans, whose conservative base insists that marriage be solely between a man and a woman.

“This is not a sea change. This is a tide that is slowly rising in favor of gay marriage,” creating a favorable political situation for Democrats and ever-more difficulty for Republicans, said David McCuan, a political scientist at Sonoma State University in California.

Democrats have a broader base filled with more accepting younger voters, as well as flexibility on the issue. Hard-core liberals support gay marriage, while others, including President Obama, take a more moderate position of civil unions and defer to states on gay marriage.

Conversely, the GOP base is older, smaller, and more conservative. Republicans have no place to shift on the issue but to the left, because the party has been identified largely with its rock-solid opposition to gay marriage and civil unions. Also, the GOP has no titular head setting the tone on this or other issues.

And tell me please, how is this couple in Iowa different from any other couple anywhere?

Veronica Spann (left) and Kentaindra Scarver were emotional as their marriage waiver was approved in Iowa on April 27.

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Red Sox, Celtics, and yes, the Bruins

Mr. President.  I know you took Michelle out for date night early last night and hustled home to watch the Bulls play for the Celtics.  Unfortunately, the Celtics won.  Don’t mean to crow, but even with Kevin Garnett and Leon Powe out with injuries, the Celtics are a better team.  I’m not saying they are going to repeat or anything – not yet – but give them credit for hanging tough.  It was the end of a great series. 

Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, date

Jim Watson/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images President and Michelle Obama stroll on the White House lawn after going out to dinner in Washington on Saturday night.

This from the New York Times

With the Celtics leading by 100-95 with 1 minute 5 seconds remaining, Gordon missed a runner and Joakim Noah fouled out chasing the loose ball. That sent Pierce to the line, where he made both free throws. When Ray Allen scored on a breakaway layup, the victory and the series were finally secure.

The win came in traditional Celtics form. Five players scored in double digits, paced by 23 points from Ray Allen. House, a wild card in the series, did not gain traction until Saturday, when he scored 16 points. He earned a technical foul after one 3-pointer when he turned to the Bulls’ bench and yelled, “I’ve been there before.”

House’s previous high in the series was 8 points, and Rivers was hesitant to give him steady minutes against Chicago’s potent perimeter players.

On Saturday, he was part of a Celtics bench that redeemed itself after being blitzed by Chicago’s throughout the series. They outscored the Bulls’ bench by 30-25. Scalabrine was the Celtics’ leading scorer through the first 15 minutes of the game. Pushed by Davis and Perkins, the Celtics outscored the Bulls’ in the paint, 44-18.

Dan Shaunghnessy wrote in the Boston Globe

It ended at 11:03 p.m. with House tossing the ball high above courtside in the general direction of the 1968 championship banner.

So what did we learn from these seven games spaced over 15 days?

We learned that the Celtics are worthy champions. With Garnett sidelined and Leon Powe KO’d in Game 1, the 2009 playoffs have the feel of a Quixotic quest, but that has not deterred the C’s. We all know that the conference finals are going through LeBrontown this year and the Cavaliers look unbeatable. But the Celtics refuse to die.

First the Celtics have to get through the Magic.  And speaking of Florida teams,  the Red Sox finally managed to win a game at Tropicana Field last night.  From Amalie Benjamin’s story in the Sunday Globe

Having started out the series by being outscored, 19-2, over two games, that 11-game winning streak seemed a distant memory, until the Sox’ bats burst out with an early uprising last night, holding on to win, 10-6, in front of 34,910.

So it was a two team win night for Boston.  The Bruins ( have to admit I know little about hockey and don’t follow it) had the night off in their second round playoff series.  If the Celtics and the Bruins keep winning, that crew at the Garden will be mighty busy.

John Powers a Globe Columnist wrote on April 14

Boston hasn’t had such a promising sports year since 1986, when the Patriots played in the Super Bowl, the Red Sox won the pennant, and the Celtics captured the crown….

This time, though, the city’s four major professional teams could pull off an unprecedented sports slam. Besides the Celtics and Bruins, who both begin their playoffs at home this week, the Sox have a good chance to return to the World Series, which they missed by one win last season. And the Patriots, with quarterback Tom Brady newly wed and rehabbed, figure to make the playoffs for the seventh time in nine years.

But, Boston, I think we may be getting ahead of ourselves.

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Banks and Our Money

Are the banks using TARP money to – successfully – lobby the Senate?  Sure looks that way.  I first heard this story on Keith Olbermann’s Countdown when he interviewed Arianna Huffington.  But the best story  is by Ryan Grim on the Huffington Post.

The Senate on Thursday rejected an effort to stave off home foreclosures by a vote of 51 to 45. It was an overwhelming defeat, with the bill’s backers falling 15 votes short — a quarter of the Democratic caucus — of the 60 needed to cut off debate and move to a final vote.

The death of the bankruptcy reform measure — which would have allowed a small number of homeowners who met strict conditions to renegotiate mortgages under bankruptcy protection — is a major tactical win for the banking industry. But allowing the foreclosure crisis to continue unabated may end up being a failed strategy for the financial sector.

A little background from the Washington Post.

The measure would have allowed bankruptcy judges to modify troubled mortgages, lowering the interest rate or principal balance, a process known as a cramdown. Bankruptcy courts can already make those changes for a second home or investment property, but not a primary residence.

This would impact owners who are seeing home values drop to the point that the mortgages are larger than what the home is worth.  Sentator Richard Durbin was the primary sponsor and the bill was back, a little tepidly, by the Obama Administration. So back to Ryan Grim.

The Chamber of Commerce has deemed the vote a crucial one that will be heavily counted in its annual scorecard, and those who voted yes will pay a financial price from the Chamber and the banking industry.

Other Democrats stuck with the banks against the homeowners. Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) was wheeled into the chamber and pointed his finger in the air, signaling a yes vote, then dramatically swung it down, as if taunting the backers of the bill.

Sens. Jon Tester (Mont.), Mary Landrieu (La.) and Ben Nelson (Neb.) all voted with the banks, as they told the Huffington Post they would. Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) voted no, as did the new Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.

Sen. Michael Bennett (D-Colo.), Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) and Max Baucus (D-Mont.) voted no as well.

Earlier this week, Durbin concluded that banks that “frankly own the place.”

How much did the Senate go for?

The banking and real estate industry has funneled roughly $2,000,000 into Landrieu’s campaign coffers over her 12-year career, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. The financial sector is Nelson’s biggest backer; he’s taken $1.4 million from banks and real estate interests and another $1.2 million from insurance firms. Tester has fielded roughly half a million in his two years in office. Lincoln has taken $1.3 million from banking and real estate interests.
Carper has raked in more than $1.5 million. Baucus, chair of the finance committee, has been on the receiving end of $3.5 million over his career. Specter has hauled in more than $4.5 million and Johnson has gotten some $2.5 million.

So don’t these Senators realize how we got into this mortgage mess to begin with?  I see crazy loans made way above a homes value even in good times whose owners are now in trouble.  Where are the mortgage bankers getting the money to lobby?  I thought they were in trouble and needed taxpayer help.  I say, no more bailout for any mortgage bank which lobbied against this bill.

By the way, there is also a list of Senators who voted their consciences:  Evan Bayh, Mark Warner, Jim Webb, and Ted Kaufman (who is not running for re-election).  We need to thank them for their votes.

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The Slow Drip of Torture Revelations

Sometimes it feels like torture.  Everyday it feels as if there are new revelations.  Everyday there is more speculation about why President Obama doesn’t come out and say he will or will not support prosecution of Bush administration officials.  I have said before that I think he is waiting to see what Congress does and what the Justice Department finds in various investigations.  I think he doesn’t want to be seen as too eager and too partisan.  I understand why many are frustrated.  After all, the Republicans brought impeachment procedings and had a multi-year investigation by a special prosecutor about what was essentially a personal crime by President Clinton.  The whole thing sapped energy from things that Clinton could have been doing and I can understand that Obama wants to pass some of his real agenda first.  I want to see criminal prosecutions in the courts, although Judge Jay Bybee is an exception who needs to be impeached.

John Nichols writing in the Nation says

And President Obama, who erred on the side of the transparency demanded by the American Civil Liberties Union in its long campaign to obtain the memos, gets points for ordering an end to the use of the torture techniques they outlined and for expressing at least a measure of openness to a “further accounting” and perhaps prosecution of wrongdoers. But Obama’s fretting about inquiries “getting so politicized” and suggesting a preference for shifting responsibility to a bipartisan independent commission are unsettling.As a former constitutional law lecturer, Obama should have a firmer grasp of the point of executive accountability. It is not merely to “lay blame,” as he suggests; it is to set boundaries on presidential behavior and to clarify where wrongdoing will be challenged. Presidents, even those who profess honorable intentions, do not get to write their own rules. Congress must set and enforce those boundaries. When Obama suggested that CIA personnel who acted on the legal advice of the Bush administration would not face “retribution,” Illinois’s Jan Schakowsky, chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence’s subcommittee on oversight and investigations, offered the only appropriate response. “I don’t want to compare this to Nazi Germany, but we’ve come to almost ridicule the notion that when horrific acts have been committed that people can use the excuse that, Well, I was just following orders,” explained Schakowsky, who has instructed aides to prepare for a torture inquiry. “There should be an open mind of what to do with information that we get from thorough investigations,” she added.

There must also be a proper framework for investigations. Gathering information for the purpose of creating a permanent record is only slightly superior to Obama’s banalities about wanting to “move forward.” Truth commissions that grant immunity to wrongdoers and bipartisan commissions that negotiate their way to redacted reports do not check and balance the executive branch any more than “warnings” punish speeding motorists.

Impeaching Bybee, as recommended by Nadler and Common Cause, would send the right signal. But it cannot be the only one. The House Judiciary Committee should examine all available avenues for achieving accountability–including the prospect of formal action against former officeholders, up to and including the sort of impeachments imagined by Mansfield and his compatriots in 1974. And Nadler and Feingold should use their subcommittees to begin outlining statutory constraints on the executive branch. The point, again, is not merely to address Bush/Cheney-era crimes but also to dial down the imperial presidency that has evolved under the unwatchful eye of successive Congresses.

“Congress…must be vigilant to the perils of the subversive notion that any public official, the president or a policeman, possesses a kind of inherent power to set the Constitution aside whenever he thinks the public interest or ‘national security’ warrants it. That notion is the essential postulate of tyranny,” California Congressman Don Edwards warned thirty-five years ago, when too many of his colleagues thought Nixon’s resignation had caged the beast of executive aggrandizement. That vigilance, too long delayed, is the essential duty of every member of Congress who swears an oath to support and defend the Constitution.

Here’s most recent example of the drip of revelations.  It appears that former Secretary of State Condi Rice might also be implicated in a conspiracy.  Keith Olbermann ran this tape  of her trying to defend torture.

So I say the Congress should begin impeaching Jay Bybee and we should let the relevatiions continue.  I’m not sure when enough will be enough to begin criminal proceedings but I’m sure Eric Holder will figure that out.

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Specter Jumps Ship

I don’t share a lot of political views with Arlen Specter, but I have to admit that on occassion he has said things and voted in a way that delighted me.  Like his vote against Robert Bork for the Supreme Court and some of his civil libertarian stances.  So I was like D.D. Gutterplan (biographer of I. F. Stone) who wrote in the Nation

…I’m trying to figure out why the news that he’d crossed the aisle made me smile this morning. I don’t think I have a sentimental take on how rapidly, even with 60 Democrats, the U.S. Senate is likely to bring about the blessed community.

I read about it at lunch and immediately thought to myself, now isn’t that wonderful.  But why exactly?  If Specter were to lose the Republican nomination, it is likely that one of several really progressive Democrats would win the general election, giving the Democrats another seat.  So why did the President welcome him to the party and say he would campaign for him instead of a real Democrat?  While Specter has made it clear he is not an automatic vote on anything (his first vote was against the Democratic budget resolution), he also made it clear that, according to the New York Times, he thought he could help President Obama.

Mr. Specter said he was “comfortable” with how Mr. Obama has conducted his presidency, which is 100 days old today, and that his own “centrist” approach on governance would help reach solutions on matters like health care, climate change, immigration, and the fiscal balancing act during a time of economic strain.

 

But let’s face it:  Specter knew he was going to lose in the Republican primary and he wants to be re-elected.  It is also true to some extent that, as he said, the Republican Party had left him.  This was echoed by Olympia Snowe quoted here in the New York Times

But Senator Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, a Republican who also supported the administration’s economic stimulus plan, said Mr. Specter’s view that the party had shifted too far to the right reflected the increasingly inhospitable climate for moderates in the Republican Party.

Ms. Snowe said national Republican leaders were not grasping that “political diversity makes a party stronger, and ultimately we are heading to having the smallest political tent in history.”

I think that the President has embraced Specter and is dissing a sure Democratic vote later because he sees Specter as a 60th vote for health care and education reform now and he wants to pass both before the 2010 elections.   And in the meanwhile it is lovely to watch the Republicans have fits.

Politico.com has a lovely article – quite long – about the finger pointing going on among Republicans. 

Faced with a high-profile defection and the prospect of political irrelevance in the Senate, Republicans took off the gloves Wednesday for a ferocious game of finger-pointing.

Republican Sens. Orrin Hatch and George Voinovich blamed the Club for Growth for imposing a right-wing litmus test that chased Arlen Specter out of the Republican Party. The Club for Growth blamed Specter — first for helping to ruin the GOP and then for leaving it. A leading Republican strategist blamed the party for turning its back on moderates. Sen. Lindsey Graham sniped at Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele. Specter’s pollster blamed the stimulus bill. Karl Rove blamed Specter himself. 

The Club for Growth President defended himself

But Andy Roth, the Club for Growth’s vice president for government affairs, said the Republican Party is at its nadir precisely because it has tolerated the likes of Specter.

“Let’s look at what a big-tent Republican Party gets you,” said Roth. “Over the last eight years, we had Big Government with a party that had no identity. People like Specter destroyed the Republican brand.”

Republicans also wanted to know why the party let someone run against Spector in the first place which is an excellent question. 

While acknowledging that Specter’s defection was “about political survival,” veteran GOP strategist John Weaver said the party must be concerned about its “political relevance.”

“If [President Barack] Obama and the Democrats control not just the left side of the playing field but also the broad middle, then we are in for generations of irrelevancy,” Weaver said. “Yes, our party principles are important. But we better be more pragmatic in how we advance our cause. There can be a center-right governing party. There cannot be one only from the right.”

Weaver said there’s “plenty of blame to go around,” and that Specter himself should receive his fair share. But he also pointed a finger at Steele, the RNC chairman, who undercut Specter by suggesting, in a recent TV interview, that he could be open to supporting primary challenges to Specter and the other GOP senators who supported Obama’s stimulus plan.

“I would remind Mr. Steele and some of our party leaders: Theirs is a job of winning elections, of increasing party strength, not of forming some sort of party purity police so this grand experiment to shrink the base to its purest form finds us confined to a phone booth,” Weaver said.

What a delicious image! 

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Wash your hands

The CDC says the best way to prevent swine flu is to wash your hands.  Here is a great story from NPR on washing effectively.

Grandma was right: If you want to prevent the spread of viruses, wash your hands.

But how long do we need to scrub? Preschoolers know the answer, and they sing a silly song or two to help them while away the 20 seconds that experts recommend.

Turns out that the “ABC” song is about right.  So pre-schoolers can practice hand washing and the alphabet at the same time.  But, as one of my co-workers said today, he’d get hauled away singing the alphabet song in the men’s room.  Allison Aubrey at NPR has a solution.

NPR’s reporters were quick to offer their suggestions: The chorus of Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” is about the right length. Maybe the guitar riff from “Layla” by Eric Clapton, or how about that famous bridge in Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” about how “we will not let you go”?

For those more inclined to the theater, the first six lines of Lady MacBeth’s “Out, Damned Spot, Out” soliloquy clocks in at 22 seconds.

Also mentioned was “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” which is my choice only because I know all the words.  What ever you pick be sure to actually scrub and get the nails, the backs of your hands and between your fingers while you sing.

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Ellsbury Steals Home

Jacoby Ellsbury, the best base stealer I’ve rooted for since Maury Wills, got his first straight steal from home and took the wind out of the Yankee’s sails.  I know they were hoping to avoid a sweep by the Red Sox in this first series of this year, but that was not to be.  The Sox won all three super long, super exciting games.

As a commenter  named ” af”  on the New York Times blog, Bats put it,

Stealing home is a slap in the face
To allow it is just a disgrace
These poor Yanks are so old
That their bones have grown cold
And they can’t seem to keep up the pace

Jim Rogash/Getty Images

Jacoby Ellsbury stole home as part of the Red Sox’ three-run fifth inning against Andy Pettitte.

Have to say that the Sox are looking good but it is a long season and they have to win on the road as well as at home.  But it is always good to beat the Yankees.